Knopf Doubleday Publishing announced today that it will release a book called The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, co-authored by Google Executive Chairman and Google Ideas Director Jared Cohen, on April 23rd.
“Schmidt and Cohen have written a clear-eyed, seminal book about our future,” said Knopf Chairman and Editor in Chief Sonny Mehta. “It is a fascinating depiction of both what could happen and what will happen.”
The announcement (via CNET) provides some description of the book from the authors:
“With the spread of connectivity, citizens will have more power than at any other time in history, but this will come with costs, particularly to both privacy and security. The technology we talk about naturally collects and stores much personal information….The risk that this information is released is increasing, and while the technology to protect it is available, human error, nefarious activity and the passage of time means that it will only become more difficult to keep information private.”
“We believe that modern technology platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, are even more powerful than most people realize. These platforms constitute a true paradigm shift, and what gives them power is their ability to grow – specifically, their speed to scale. Almost nothing, short of a biological virus, can scale as quickly, efficiently or aggressively as these technology platforms and this makes the people who build, control, and use them powerful too.”
…
“This is a book about the importance of a guiding human hand in the new digital age. For all the possibilities that communication technologies represent, their use for good or ill depends solely on people. Forget all the talk about machines taking over. What happens in the future is up to us.”
The book will also be published as an eBook and as an audiobook for Random House.
And don’t forget to watch this recent speech from Schmidt in which he mentions that he will soon send robots to parties to represent him. I wonder if he’ll do the same for book signings.